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Inside Politics

Book Excerpt: Ivanka Trump Mused About Running For President; Book Excerpt: Bannon Talks About Trump And Putin; Trump: My Nuclear Button Is Bigger Than Kim Jong Un's; North Korea Opens Lines Of Communication With South Korea; Soon: White House Meets With Congressional Leaders. Aired 12:30-13pm ET

Aired January 03, 2018 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[12:33:08] DANA BASH, INSIDE POLITICS HOST: We've been talking about a new book on the Trump campaign which apparently has a lot of pretty explosive color and quotes. Now the New York magazine has posted an excerpt or two and here's a part about what Bannon often talks about, and that is attacking Jared and Ivanka Trump.

The quote is, "Balancing risk against reward, both Jared and Ivanka decided to accept roles in the White House over the advice of almost everyone they knew. It was a joint decision by the couple, and in some sense, a joint job. Between themselves, they had made an earnest deal. If sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she'd be the one to run for president. The first woman president Ivanka entertained would not be Hillary Clinton, it would be Ivanka Trump."

Thoughts?

MICHAEL BENDER, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: That's -- It's wild. And that is the first I've heard of that. I'm, you know, fairly plugged in over at the White House. It's an explosive statement and, you know, the idea of her being president is not to me her effort but I do think the first part of that is pretty accurate that they were warned. The President himself, we reported in the Journal repeatedly told them not to come to New York and was worried about their brand, worried about their business, and what was going to happen to them in Washington.

And it was never -- it's never really been made crystal clear why they disregarded the President's advice and came to Washington.

BASH: Yes.

BENDER: I guess maybe there's a world in which this is it.

ELIANA JOHNSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Well, what I find interesting about that is that Trump obviously campaigned against the idea of political legacy and legacy families against the Bush family and against the Clinton family. So it would be truly ironic if his own children or, you know, one of his children harbored the same aspirations and wanted to make the Trump family one of these historic American, you know, political legacy families.

[12:35:15] And I do wonder if after the Trump presidency, he will be able to carry on a legacy that is respected in American politics in the same way. That really would be wild.

BASH: And look, I mean, I also have heard the idea that not that the President was pressing Jared and Ivanka not to come down here. But that the concern was more on the President's side and the reason -- that there's a reason nepotism laws are in place is to protect you and them from anything that might happen if they do decide to join the campaign. I had not heard that it's because she wants to be president.

Let me read another excerpt that we're just getting via this magazine. This is apparently allegedly a conversation that Steve Bannon had with the late Roger Ailes who, of course, founded and ran Fox News. "What has he gotten himself into with the Russians? Pressed Ailes. Mostly, said Bannon, he went to Russia and he thought he was going to meet Putin but Putin couldn't give a you know what about him. So he's kept trying."

Again, this is Bannon allegedly talking to Roger Ailes. The idea here is that it was Trump who was being the aggressor in the relationship, trying to get Putin's attention, trying to curry favor with Vladimir Putin.

ASAWIN SUEBSAENG, POLITICS REPORTER, THE DAILY BEAST: Right. And well, that's not a secret per se in the sense that if you do a search of Donald Trump's Twitter feed in years past, he has tried to do that in public. So I have to --

BASH: He has been trying to do in public but this is suggesting that he actually went to Russia, tried to get Putin, you know, to sort of -- to meet with him and to be a more formal ally and couldn't get it done.

KOURAN DEMIRJIAN: At the point he might have done that, it was probably more a business arrangement because if you -- there's a thing, you can't really divorce business from politics entirely in Russia. So if you can curry favor with the Russian President, you get doors opened to you in the financial world.

But -- I mean, this is the two sides of this whole Russia scandal, right, which is on the one side, what did the Russians want? How organized was their campaign to try to wield influence over the American elections. Were the allegations that they were trying to specifically to help the Trump campaign actually accurate or was it a bunch of people trying to please Putin and this is just the spaghetti that stuck to the wall.

On the other side of it, is how cool did the Trump operation think it might be to actually have some sort of relationship with Russia as there are these allegations that they might have, you know, maybe had the intention but not the means or it was the allegations that they actually did make contact. It has to be viewed from both sides. So this sort of dialogue between Bannon and Ailes sheds some apparent right. Or at least there's another thing to be taken into consideration as we're looking all those alligations about what the Trump side of the operation was thinking was the potential and the reality between the two.

BASH: Do you guys remember when Steve Bannon was on the cover of Time Magazine at the beginning of the -- towards the beginning of the Trump presidency, Time Magazine being clearly maybe besides the New York Times, Donald Trump's favorite publication? I remember as soon as I thought that I said, uh-oh, Bannon's going to be in trouble now.

BENDER: He is the great manipulator.

BASH: The great manipulator. Well, here's another excerpt from this book, which suggests my instincts and it was not exactly an original instincts were right about how the President was going to take that.

Listen to this. "Because they were sore losers and hated him for winning, they spread total lies, 100 percent made up things totally untrue. For instance, the cover that week of Time Magazine which Trump reminded his listener, he had been on more than anyone in history that showed Steve Bannon a good guy saying he was the real president. How much influence do you think Steve Bannon has over me, Trump demanded. He repeated the question, then repeated the answer, zero, zero. And that went for his son-in-law too who had a lot to learn."

I think --

BENDER: He's actually right there. I mean, I don't think Steve Bannon has much influence on Trump or Jared Kushner. I mean, Trump has made that clear. But what he's also making clear there as what you were saying before is that anyone in the spotlight --

BASH: Yes.

BENDER: -- is going to get beaten back no matter how important they are and even if it's Steve Bannon who in the White House at the time was really the -- at least at the very least, the symbolic -- symbol that the Trump movement and the Trump base and had the title of chief strategist.

BASH: Yes. And do you remember SNL had this -- the famous skit where they put Bannon dressed as the grim reaper at the resolute desk and they put Trump playing with tidally winks off to the side.

SUEBSAENG: Well, it's funny you should mention that. The President of the United States is incredibly sensitive about his portrayal in the press and media particularly with regards to is he controlled by x, y and z advisers. And one of the things that irked him is the SNL sketch that you were talking about.

[12:40:06] As we reported at the Daily Beast months ago, that was something that did take him off where a sketch comedy film on NBC was portraying the President of the United States as being controlled by grim reaper Bannon. So this is something President Trump is very plugged into and cares about to an extreme degree. BASH: Well, there I say it is all a pattern. Time Magazine, SNL, The New York Times, and I'm going to say it, CNN. He likes to get, you know, adoration and adulation from those organizations.

We're going to have to leave it there. There's definitely a lot more to talk about in this book. And again, we're just getting excerpts.

Coming up, President Trump's tweets attacking the North Korean dictator shock members of the intelligence community. Will Kim Jong- un respond? Stay with us.

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BASH: Welcome back. If the idea of a nuclear showdown with North Korea keeps you up at night, I would recommend deleting your Twitter app now. Last -- decided to escalate things with Pyongyang after North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un announced to the world that at his desk features a button to launch nuclear weapons.

Well, President Trump was apparently not going to be outdone by an unstable and ruthless dictator. And so he shared his not so humble taunt with the familiar theme, size.

[12:45:09] On Twitter asking, "Will someone please inform Kim Jong-un that I, too, have a nuclear button but it is much bigger and more powerful one than his and my button works?"

CNN Military and Diplomatic Analyst John Kirby joins our panel now. And Admiral Kirby, you spend a career not only working on national security but trying to communicate about national security and keep everything calm in doing so. What was your take reading this?

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY (RET.), CNN MILITARY AND DIPLOMAT ANALYST: Well, it makes a ridiculous tweet for one thing. But two things are really important in foreign policy communications. One is that there's coordination.

That when a President of the United States speaks whether its Twitter or any other vehicle, those words are coordinated with the interagency and sometimes and importantly with our allies and partners. And in this case, when you're tweeting about South Korea, you want to include the South Koreans in communicating, and the Japanese, as well. This doesn't appear to have that at all.

The second thing is you want clarity and sobriety. And of course, that, tweet had none of that either. I mean, it was sophomoric, it was petulant, and it was completely unnecessary. It was unhinged from the very good work that his national security team has been doing for many months.

I mean, think about what they've been able to get China to do. Yes, China can do more but they have put in place tougher sanctions than anybody else has. And I believe that Secretary Tillerson and Secretary Mattis really are serious when they talk about diplomacy being in the lead. And I have to believe that there are at least efforts under the table to try to do something, some kind of back channel communications. This kind of thing just under cuts all that.

But what really worried me last night, Dana, when I was driving home thinking what if -- if you look at the whole breadth of the tweets that he did yesterday, all 16 of them, also petulant, sophomoric, impulsive. And the thought occurred to me, what if this is just recreation for him? What if this isn't tactics or strategy or anything?

It's just him, you know, trying to be therapeutic and trying to just get it off his chest. I mean, he came back from vacation and maybe he just had all this pent up. If that's true, and I hope I'm wrong about that, my goodness, how much more dangerous is that for American foreign policy.

BASH: Well, listen, I don't think that you are wrong. I think there is some truth to that that you and I were talking in the break and I reported it real time. Last year when he was having a photo op with generals and their wives and he talked about the calm before the storm, sending everybody into a tizzy, what is he talking about? Is he going to launch a strike against somebody? I was told by somebody who talked to him that he went to the residence and watched cable news and laughed about the fact with just a phrase like that, he can gin everybody up.

KIRBY: That is really potentially catastrophic for us. Because, look, the President of the United States isn't just the leader of the United States, he's the leader literally of the free world. It is the most powerful position in human history, human history.

So when he says something, he moves markets. He influences adversaries. He can reassure allies and friends or he can leave them quaking. And he literally has in his hand, when he gets on that smartphone, history in his hands. And I don't think he at least doesn't sound like and this really is frightening that he fully appreciates that responsibility.

BENDER: We definitely know that his Twitter button is bigger than Kim Jong-un's.

KIRBY: Well, is the button bigger or is the hand smaller?

BENDER: You brought up the timing. And that's kind of one of the questions I have about this. I was with the President over New Year's Eve at Mar-a-Lago when Kim Jong-un made a speech.

When the President went to his New Year's Eve, actually he stopped and talked to reporters. We ask him that was the question several of us shouted at him -- to him and when he stopped to respond. His respond to us, we'll see. We'll see, come on into the party.

And then he mentioned his Twitter feed, I think it was yesterday. In the morning, he acknowledged that North Korea was interested in talks with South Korea and said perhaps it's good news. You know, again, we'll see.

And then not until last night this sort of eruption. So I just wonder like, you know, three days after Kim's speech that it took for this to get him riled up. And I don't know what the answer is to why it would take the President that long to get worked up about this.

KIRBY: Could it be -- and I know this is going to sound crazy, but could it just be that he was coming off vacation. He spent so much time golfing, maybe he wasn't focused on news coverage while he was down there. I don't know. But you might have something there because, again, 16 tweets.

BENDER: Yes.

KIRBY: A lot of them about foreign policy issues that all of us had been talking about and covering for several days now.

BASH: Right.

KIRBY: And then he just launches them all out in one day.

BASH: I think you might be honest on it that he's -- he refocused on these things that are on his plate in a very big way, in a very immediate way.

JOHNSON: You know, I also think the President, he -- of course, he is now the chief executive, but he remains an entertainer. That's what he's been his entire life. And he tweets for his own entertainment, but then he also likes to see it played back to him on T.V. And so he sent that tweet and what he watching all day, he gets to see coverage of the tweet.

[12:50:04] And I think he gets the sort of pleasure from that and entertainment. And he is -- he fundamentally is, you know, a publicist, a brander and an entertainer.

BASH: Yes, he is. We're going to have to take a quick break. We'll get to you at the next segment.

Up next, Chuck and Nancy, Mitch and Paul, the key players from the White House facing off on Capitol Hill today, we'll see what that's about just ahead.

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BASH: And speaking of the White House and its relationship with members of Congress in just a couple of hours, congressional leaders will meet with two members of the Trump Administration, the Budget Director Nick Mulvaney and the Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short. Republicans will likely want to keep the conversation on keeping the government funded before the shutdown deadline later this month. But the Democrats have promised to fight for a fix to DACA. And who won't be there to negotiate with the Democrats? That would be the President of the United States.

We're back around the table. And I was told that the President, that's an intentional thing to keep the President away from Chuck and Nancy as he calls them. The first negotiations certainly didn't go his way on DACA. And also that Nick Mulvaney who was in the House as, you know, one of the most conservative flame throwers is not somebody that they necessarily like. So that's another reason why the White House is putting him in the room with the Democrats.

[12:55:05] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's -- I mean, all of these things are power moves, right? They've got less than three weeks to come up with a solution to this at this point. And the President has tweeted about what he believes the ultimate deal has to be on the more contentious issues like DACA. There is the question of where the blame game will be if they can't come to a resolution quickly.

There also just happens to be small, little, you know, a major national security instrument of surveillance tools on the table that have the extension that is going to go. And, you know, by the President not showing up, he's basically holding his ability to not agree to whatever they strike.

BASH: And holding his ability to be the closer.

DEMIRJIAN: Exactly.

BLENDER: We'll, that's right. We'll see if he's empowered Marc Short and Mulvaney. Is the President more willing to undercut staff and empower them?

BASH: Yes.

BENDER: If they get close to a deal, can they say yes or do they have to go back to the President.

JOHNSON: You know, they've tried to take the x-factor out of this equation. But the President has shown an inability to be managed by his aides. So, I'll be watching for if they can able to do that and kind of deal without the President actually being present.

BASH: We're going to have to leave it there. Turn it over to Wolf Blitzer. Thank you all for this great discussion.

Thank you for watching INSIDE POLITICS. As I mention, Wolf Blitzer is up after a quick break.

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington.